# Science of team science

Science of team science (SciTS) is a field of scientific philosophy and methodology that advocates using cross-disciplinary collaboration to solve problems. The field encompasses conceptual and methodological strategies that focus on understanding how scientific teams can be organized to work more effectively. SciTS initiatives are concerned with understanding and managing circumstances that facilitate or hinder the effectiveness of collaborative science, as well as evaluating its outcomes.

## History

Since the 1990s, there has been a growing interest and investment in large-scale, team-based research initiatives to address problems that require cross-disciplinary collaboration. The rapid growth in multiple fields has created a need to establish partnerships among scientists and practitioners drawn from several different fields in order to address complex problems.
The interdisciplinary nature of SciTS initially emerged from practical concerns raised by funding agencies, which needed to gauge the performance of team science, understand its added value, determine the return on investment of large research initiatives, and inform scientific policy. The term "science of team science" was first introduced in October 2006 at a conference called The Science of Team Science: Assessing the Value of Transdisciplinary Research, hosted by the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. The SciTS field was further developed in a supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published in July 2008. Two years later, the First Annual International Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference was held on April 22–24, 2010, in Chicago, Illinois, organized by the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute.
In 2013, the National Academy of Sciences established a National Research Council Committee on the Science of Team Science to evaluate the current state of knowledge and practice in the SciTS field. A committee report was later published in 2015.
In 2023, Patrick Forscher and his colleagues published a review to detail the benefits of big team science, showing that innovations improve the collection of larger samples and allow both reproducibility and generalizability to continue. However, there is a worry that team science could dominate funding opportunities and divert focus from practical to more theoretical areas, as well as generate large-scale failed endeavors. Forscher recommended that they create an advisory board, create structured bylaws, formalize ways to solicit feedback from contributors, engage in mentoring, and separate idea generation from project implementation.

## Methods

The definition of a successful team may differ depending on the stakeholder. SciTS uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the antecedent conditions, collaborative processes, and outcomes associated with team science, as well as the organizational, social, and political context that influences team science.
A 2018 review of literature on SciTS, published between 2006–2016, identified 109 articles on the topic and reported that 75% of these articles used pre-existing data (e.g., archival data), 62% used bibliometrics, over 40% used surveys, and over 10% used interview and observational data.